Re: Multi-arch netinst getting too big

[Ferenc Wagner <wferi@niif.hu>]

Ian Campbell <ijc@hellion.org.uk> writes:

> On Sat, 2010-06-26 at 21:12 +0200, Ferenc Wagner wrote:
>
>> Ian Campbell <ijc@hellion.org.uk> writes:
>> 
>>> Another option might be to combine gtk/initrd.gz and xen/initrd.gz so
>>> that the overhead is only the kernel udebs and not duplicating all the
>>> other stuff.
>> 
>> I probably mentioned this already, but you aren't constrained to a
>> single initrd.gz: you can use several ones separated by commas.
>
> Where can I use several? In a Xen domain config file or in some
> bootloader config or something? Is it actually supported of does it just
> happen to work by some coincidence?

Unfortunately not in a Xen domain config, AFAIK.  But isolinux supports
it, as per syslinux.txt:

        It supports multiple filenames separated by commas.
        This is mostly useful for initramfs, which can be composed of
        multiple separate cpio or cpio.gz archives.

It's actually an overlay, so it may be possible to work around the Xen
limitation by making the Xen initrd the base one and overwriting its
arch dependent parts as needed.  Hopefully this can be done without
wasting much memory, maybe by adding empty files/directories to the
overlay initrd.

But I don't know a thing about the powerpc bootloader.  If that does not
support this, the possible gains are somewhat lower.
-- 
Regards,
Feri.